Sumo Logic Combines Logs, Metric Data in Analytics Service

Like the cloud before it a decade ago, big data analytics is beginning to find its mainstream place in the midrange and large enterprise. This is mainly because enterprises that have finished testing its potential are now starting to deploy effective production use cases.
On the supplier side, vendors are now fine-tuning their analytics platforms—if not for entire vertical industries, at least for some of the more common use cases. After all, they have to point their tech to where the business is.
Not to be outdone, Sumo Logic, an early leader in the cloud-native/machine-data analytics sector, is bucking the specialization trend and instead integrating more functionality into its already popular platform.
On April 12, the Redwood City, Calif.-based company introduced what it calls the industry's first all-in-one machine data analytics platform, one that can natively ingest, index and analyze structured metrics data—and unstructured log data—together in real time.

Structured Logs, Unstructured Data Co-Exist in Same Analytics Bin

The cloud-based software unifies logs and metrics, thus melding two data types into real-time continuous intelligence for business use. In addition, the Sumo Logic system that is now being used for only log data has been extended to include time-series metrics, to make correlating logs and metrics instant and contextual.
Current Sumo Logic subscribers now will have instant access to the full analytics spectrum for their applications—from code to user behaviors—to move with the speed and agility necessary to compete in the market.
"From the beginning of the company, the goal then and now was to democratize analytics," President and CEO Ramin Sayar told eWEEK. "Sumo Logic set out to solve the pain of centralized log management by applying the power of distributed cloud computing, and so we became the machine data platform of choice for new-gen apps.
"Early on, streamlining and taking the complexity out of this process was for security purposes. Now it's for application, infrastructure, security and business purposes. We're taking another step forward for our 1,000-plus customers and the industry by enriching the Sumo Logic service with an additional data dimension, which we think will result in an explosion of use cases in machine learning."
Handles All Data Natively
Sumo Logic's secret sauce is the ability to handle the unique structure types of log and time-series metrics data natively—in the context of each data type’s unique form—to make log and metric analytics viewable in real time via graphical, interactive dashboards.
Log and metric data can be viewed side-by-side or contextually overlaid in an instant to speed up troubleshooting and enable digital businesses to easily optimize their modern applications for performance, availability, sustainability, security, customer satisfaction and new revenue-generating opportunities.
Sumo Logic also extends its advanced analytics technology, powered by machine learning algorithms, to time-series metrics, beginning with infrastructure metrics and, more important, extending to the custom application metrics needed to monitor and understand the operational and business key performance indicators (KPIs) generated by the application itself as users interact with it.
This enables Sumo Logic users to identify patterns, anomalies and threshold outliers quickly and efficiently to address issues that have an impact on application performance, availability, security and customer satisfaction.
All Handled Inside a Cloud Service
Sumo Logic makes all of these capabilities available in a multitenant, cloud-native service.
Key features and benefits of Sumo Logic's enhanced platform, according to Sayar, include the following:
--Full stack visibility of the entire modern application stack using all machine data sources: Graphite, AWS CloudWatch, Docker, Chef, Apache, MySQL and more;
--Business and operational KPIs for development, DevOps, TechOps, Security Ops and lines of business teams through custom and standard out-of-the-box metrics and logs;
--Monitoring and troubleshooting with correlation of logs and metrics, the single pane of glass that overlays logs, metrics and other types of machine data for easy, one-click troubleshooting; and
--Real-time analytics through machine learning—outliers and anomaly detection of logs and metrics for faster root cause analysis.
Sumo Logic's enhanced platform for unifying logs and metrics is available for early access and will be generally available this summer. For more information about this platform, register for a webinar, "Break the Silo: Transform Logs and Metrics into Real-time Insights" on May 4 at 10 a.m. Pacific time to see a live demonstration.

Chris Preimesberger is Editor of Features and Analysis at eWEEK. Twitter: @editingwhiz